The real world experience of trying to persuade Windows users to switch to Linux.
The real world experience of trying to persuade Windows users to switch to Linux.
35 Comments
HDR?
Once there’s total feature parity, I’ll be moving to Linux.
It’s more of an issue that 95% of the experience is similar, but the 5% that comes from using Linux can be a dealbreaker. Linux Mint is easy to use, but it’s not easier to use than Windows, little minor things can be annoying such as fractional display scaling, etc. Also, proton makes most games work easily, but then again “most” is not “all.” and a lot of games (eg, those with kernal level anticheat) don’t work.
Edit: Think about the [The Pareto Principle (wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) or, more relevantly, the last mile problem, 95% of linux works fine, but that 5% (e.g., display issues, game support) blocks full adoption.
It’s the equivalent of people trying to push their religious bullshit down my throat.
The feds could get so many more confessions if they just interrogated people using Linux users.
For gaming on an Nvidia GPU I’m staying on windows. My old ass laptop is running fedora and my old ass desktop serves as a media server on Ubuntu running Plex. I’ll probably get a MacBook soon for travel and CAD and the unholy trinity will be completed.
I do not want to Beat my head on the wall for hours
in all honesty i would be in arch or any linux distro like in 20 years if it wasn’t for a couple of programs i use and the 2 only games i play consistently today. but things are turning around so am hoping for the best for linux ^^)
Why are you trying to persuade anyone?
You are acting the exact oposite way by posting this…
I have several computers that run on Linux
My main computer is Windows. Because that makes my life easy.
Or just don’t try to make them switch if they clearly don’t want to?
I can’t go buy it pre-installed at Best Buy….Linux users don’t understand user friendliness
Linux is free as long as your time is worthless
I *want* to go Linux, but I have to give up too many things for it to be viable and I’m not in to that dual boot life any more.
what is even the point of using linux for the normie bro anyway? You don’t want to spend 70 bucks?
Nothing is better at convincing people to switch from Windows to Linux than Windows itself.
I just recently tried switching to Mint and couldn’t use my photo or video editing software and the alternatives were very few or vary lacking. Using duel monitors didn’t work for shit while gaming and you cannot play a lot of multi player games and no HDR.
Anytime i went looking for answers id get the same two replies almost every single time, Google it I.E figure it out yourself or switch to a different distro.
For most people Linux is a waste of time right now.
Trying to convince individual people is insane, people use what’s most appealing and convenient, Linux distros without support from a company like Microsoft have no chance. Even Valve is fighting an uphill battle and very likely won’t be able to turn SteamOS into a desktop OS because people don’t treat the Steam Deck like a computer anymore than a PlayStation. Doesn’t even matter that besides gaming, everything the vast majority of people do is practically contained in web apps and it’s OS agnostic, meaning a huge number of people could make the switch to any of the major Linux distributions without even losing out on anything because PC gaming isn’t as common as we think it is looking at it from gamers’ and power users’ perspective, but people still won’t switch and YOU won’t convince them, most don’t even understand the concept of an operating system, in fact newer generations are ironically growing up with less knowledge now that operating systems became convenient and most of our stuff moved to the web. Not to mention Linux is undergoing a major paradigm shift with the switch from X to Wayland and it complicated things that aren’t fully resolved. We also have a serious lack of accessibility (where Wayland actually made things unnecessarily harder to implement) which could be a great selling point since nobody else wants to standardize all the various methods, “Linux” could take the lead and fill large gaps, but it doesn’t. Ultimately the issue is that there’s no unifying “force,” even our distro-agnostic package handling is fragmented among snaps, flatpaks and appimages.
And there’s laptops, also a major player in the PC world despite so many ignoring it in the Linux community, they’re also a mess. We managed to get proper AMD and Nvidia GPU support a bit ago but many laptops with them are still problematic since hybrid graphics is a hit or miss, most fingerprint sensors don’t work at all, touchpads used to suck for the longest time and only recently started becoming not a pain in the ass but they still lack features, every other laptop has RGB keyboard you can’t easily control in Linux distros, and now a whole new set of proprietary hardware with Microsoft at the helm is coming as the push for ARM laptops is ramping up again, who knows what drivers we won’t have Linux support for.
The fact Linux (and Mac for that matter) users feel the need to spread the good word of their operating system is crazy to begin with. How about use whatever you want and stop pushing people to use your system.
As a linux systems admin – I completely agree. On the other hand, damn does linux have issues that are potentially breaking. Installed Bazzite on my Asus TUF A16 laptop, and worked great while I went on vacation to a place without signal. Then it crashed midgame due to overheating. Turns out the new kernel has an issue with btrfs and I didn’t know how to fix on hand without being able to look it up. These issues need to be fixed BEFORE kernel updates for a general public release.
The real world experience of trying to persuade linux users to switch to windows
i know a guy who for some unknown reason loves **gaming** on linux and wastes entire evenings of our friends group trying to make games we play work, they don’t. he redownloads it on windows, but only after wasting at least 2 hours of 5 other people who were waiting for him.
if you’re reading this rocjusz, fvck you (lovingly, as always)
I’m not trying to persuade anyone. I use Linux, it works for me, a couple of friends know I switched, but I don’t join a call and go “hey guys, I’m still on Linux and here’s why you should join me”. It will not become simpler than Windows maybe ever and that’s a dealbreaker to almost everyone.
“hey i use arch btw” vibes
Well let’s not mince facts here, Linux users are the marketing department for Linux. If people didn’t talk about Linux, most people wouldn’t know Linux exists at all or that it can be a perfectly fine alternative.
Recently installed Bazzite on a spare PC, seems cool.
Can’t do it on my main PC though. Friends want to play AAA multiplayer games.
The last point is the deal breaker for me.*Most* games work. The games I like to play, like R6 and Destiny 2, don’t.
Well I’ve been using a version of Linux and its predecessors since 1984. I don’t have a windows machine anywhere but I don’t play the same games. Yes I had to build my own cad/cam program that could read and create AutoCAD files when AutoCAD was released. I think learning windows now would be a waste of time and energy.
https://preview.redd.it/6nvdsd6874ff1.png?width=1470&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c9b82506da6752cd0b478619cbda02d30fa353b
I have yet to have anyone wow me with the things I could do with Linux. Mostly they tell me how close it is to windows, an OS I dislike enough to consider switching to Linux.
Fuckin Linux. Just type in that code to install that app and blah blah blah. Average consumers don’t want none of that smoke.
yeah easy to use, It took me an hour to figure out how to add Chinese input method on Linux
Most people don’t need Linux. You are not superior for using Linux. Most people don’t like the fact that they can’t play most of the games available on pc or use proprietary software on Linux.
I think what I find frustrating is people who bitch and moan about Windows constantly, but refuse to try the alternative. Like if someone is happy with Windows, that’s great! But it seems like a lot of people really *aren’t*.
You really shouldn’t go around just trying to pressure people into switching though.
yeah buddy but I need to work, and I need to work in teams so I have to use the industry standard and I cannot switch to some random open source equivalent and force my mates into a new software for no reason.
I know this sub is primarily focused on gaming but it’s always wild to me how rarely I see anyone being up how much software just flat out doesn’t work with Linux as another reason it’s just not worth using.
I work in the creative industry and there are just no good alternatives for Linux (I’m sure I’ll get a Linux user trying to convince me otherwise but I assure you whatever program you mention is not up to the industry standard).